The 78th General Assembly of the United Nations begins this Tuesday (19), in New York. As usual, Brazil will give the opening speech at the event, which brings together all 193 UN members. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will be at the pulpit, for the eighth time, with an open microphone to speak about the main lines of Brazilian foreign policy on different topics.
The content of the speech is confidential. But, based on Lula’s participation in recent events, such as the Brics and G7 summits, it is very likely that he will press buttons that he has been hitting for 20 years. When he addressed the United Nations for the first time in 2003, the president focused mainly on two themes: global governance reforms and combating hunger. In 2009, when he gave his last speech, he returned to talking about governance and highlighted two other topics: financial crisis and climate change.
:: Lula arrives in New York to participate in the UN General Assembly; check schedule ::
In other words, a brief observation of Lula’s history of public interventions allows us to note that, among all subjects, the reform of global governance systems is one that he never fails to address. Reason: he wants Brazil, like other countries, to have a more prominent voice in global decision-making, notably those relating to international peace and security. And that your speeches can be transformed into actions.
“UN reform has become an imperative, given the risk of regression in the international political order”, said Lula in 2003. He criticized the fact that the composition of the permanent members of the Security Council was the same as when the UN was created, in 1945, and said it is essential that the body’s decisions enjoy legitimacy within the Community of Nations as a whole, a process that he describes as “improvement of the multilateral system”.
:: Lula offers two times to meet with Zelensky in New York ::
The permanent members were five: the United States, Russia, France, the United Kingdom and China, basically the winning powers of the Second World War (1939-1945). Today, 20 years later, the composition remains the same. And Lula continues to insist that this hard core be expanded, arguing that the post-war scenario no longer exists.
One rule in particular bothered the president: the fact that permanent members have the right to veto on any issue, which gives them the power to block any initiative with which they disagree. In this sense, Lula stated: “The UN has already shown that there are legal and political alternatives to the veto paralysis and actions without multilateral endorsement.” However, after two decades, the veto remains in force. And Lula continues to criticize him whenever he has the opportunity.
It is important to consider the “emergence of developing countries as important actors on the international scene, often playing a crucial role in the search for peaceful and balanced solutions to conflicts”, said the president in 2003, emphasizing that his demand does not just refer to Brazil , but to developing countries in general.
At the time, the context was the second war in Iraq, which had victimized Iraqis and citizens of other nationalities, including the Brazilian Sérgio Vieira de Mello, then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
“You can perhaps win a war alone. But lasting peace cannot be built without everyone’s support”, said the president. “The UN was not designed to remove the rubble of conflicts that it could not prevent, however valuable its humanitarian work may be. Our central task is to preserve the people from the scourge of war. Seek negotiated solutions.”
In 2009, the year in which Lula gave his last speech — he was still president in 2010, but did not go to the UN —, the highlight on the international scene was of another order: the consequences of the serious financial crisis of 2008, triggered by the collapse of the Lehman bank. Brothers. But the president also used it as a motto to defend reforms in governance logic. After all, the developed countries and the multilateral organizations where they were hegemonic, argued the president, had been “incapable of foreseeing the catastrophe that was beginning and, even less, of preventing it”, in yet another demonstration that the course correction of the world economy could not be “just the responsibility of the usual”.
More than the crisis of the big banks, Lula argued, the world was experiencing the “crisis of the big dogmas”. “What fell apart was an entire economic, political and social conception that was considered unquestionable. What failed was a senseless model of thought and action that has subjugated the world in recent decades. It was the absurd doctrine that markets could self-regulate, dispensing with any State intervention, considered by many to be a mere hindrance,” he stated in his 2009 statement.
Today, the world is experiencing yet another conflict, in Ukraine, caused by the invasion of a country that is a permanent member of the UN Security Council, Russia. Lula has condemned the invasion, but has always refused to echo the strong criticisms of Western powers, who demand the departure of Russian troops from the invaded territories as a precondition for negotiating a peace agreement.
The conflict continues and will probably be another hook for Lula to emphasize that the search for a more peaceful planet will only become viable when issues relating to security and peace are managed in a way that is more appropriate to the world order in force in 2023.
In addition to itself, Brazil defends the inclusion of India, Germany and Japan as permanent members of the Security Council. Germany and Japan were the great losers of the Second World War, therefore they were excluded from the definition of global governance at that time. It’s been almost 80 years. India, like Brazil, is a founding member of BRICS, as are China, Russia and South Africa. The bloc recently held a summit meeting and called, through its final declaration, for the expansion of the UN SC.
Lula’s speech can be followed here, this Tuesday morning (19). The General Assembly starts at 10 am (Brasília time) and Lula is the third to speak.
(With information from Carta Capital)
Editing: Patrícia de Matos
